Make it Easier for Your Audience

September 15, 2008 · Comments

nicebuttons Vicki Flaugher has done some brilliant things with her website design. In fact, as I started to type this bit up to talk about how great her subscription buttons are (just LOOK at that email subscription sticky note), I went back to the top of her web page and caught all the other little design tidbits. Look at the top left where there’s built in language translation buttons. Look at the top right, where the first thing I see is a sign up for even more material (a conversion engine). Check out the subtle little PayPal Tip Jar in the first little bit of scroll on the far right column.

Vicki’s About page has a picture of her, and a very clear sense of what she wants to do next with you. She even goes so far as to post a bit of her singing ability, for an added extra something.

I can’t compliment her work enough. Smart Woman Guides is a great site looking at making it easier for Vicki’s audience and community.

And how did I find her? I read her comment on one of my posts, saw her tweet, and then caught a trackback to a blog she posted that mentioned my next level blogging advice.

What do you think? Can you see why I like what she’s done? Any advice you’d give Vicki?

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ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Thesis WordPress theme

Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.

With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.

  • Thanks for pointing me to the site! Brilliant design! SUBSCRIBE!
  • It's a fun design, but the homepage is SEVENTY-EIGHT PAGES LONG. That's what happens if you try to print it--I stopped at Print Preview fortunately. So that's my bit of advice: offer fewer posts, for load time and sanity. Just imagine how long 78 pages would take on a mobile browser...and her poor server!
  • The paypal tip jar is a nice touch..a tip suggests rewarding someone for a service while donation sounds so needy....
  • Crap. How long is my home page? Great point, Jared.
  • @Jared - yeah, choosing how many posts to allow to scroll down was a toss up for me on my site. I think I've decided to have fewer, but then add "additional related articles" links at the end of my posts so that I can get deeper link following within the rest of the site. Good point you make -one I was unsure of how to ultimately resolve.

    @freebiechasers - excellent suggestion. Not sure how to do it as a tip jar instead of a donate button. I will definitely change that - thank you. I like the sound of that better too.

    @chrisbrogan - thank you for such a wonderful recommend on my site. It's an honor to have been mentioned and I appreciate everyone's comments. I figure the only way to get better is to welcome feedback.

    Together, we are stronger,
    Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman
    founder of SmartWoman Guides

    p.s. FYI - This blog layout is a Wordpress template with a few tweaks. It comes Adsense ready, but contextual ads didn't work well because dating sites, marketing scammy offers, and other questionable ads came up because my site talks so much about women plus online marketing. I got complaints from readers, so I eliminated that.
  • I think credit should be given to the developers of the theme as they did implement the sticky note as part of it. The theme can be found here: http://blogosquare.com/2007/06/18/myjournal-mee....
  • @Corby agreed - the theme is great and, as I mentioned, I used it pretty much intact. It was easy, not bunky in any way like some other themes I tried, and I would recommend the programmers completely. It was a dream to use.

    With themes, the hardest part for me is finding ones that takes marketing and SEO into consideration, as many do not. Having an opt-in above the fold, having easy to change sidebars/widgets to add text for an opt-in offer, coming Adsense ready/enabled, etc. makes a huge difference and the My-Journal theme is one of a just a handful available through the wordpress.org site that has all the needed items. Definite kudos to the programmers!

    Vicki
    follow me at http://twitter.com/smartwoman
  • The sticky note is brilliant. It draws the eye and makes something boring stand out. Genius.
  • Heh, I actually will be giving advice to Vicky in a few days, so I will save it for the call! ;) You'll get to hear what it is, because it's going to be recorded and available from my blog.

    I will let one little thing slip now: the hyperlinks are not high-contrast enough against the white background. :)

    Talk to ya soon, Vicki!
  • Very smart. If your objective is to increase subscribers, you need to destroy the barriers and encourage that behaviour which Vicki has done.
  • how refreshing :)
    The problem with templates, even though they can be be a good starting point, is that they limit our vision for what is possible with a new, fresh interpretation of the same ol'
    Thanks for sharing
  • @Jasmin - agreed that there is a downside to templates.

    Since I specialize in reaching beginning female entrepreneurs, I feel it's very important that I implement on my site what they could. With most new entrepreneurs, they are already overcoming so many emotional, mental, and educational hurdles when they start that I like to remove as many financial and knowledge barriers as I can with what I do, so they can emulate it more easily. I want to be a living example of what's possible for anyone to do, even if they have restricted budget or little to no tech skills. Templates help in that, even with their admitted constrictions. It's a tradeoff, but one I feel serves my mission's purpose. But, you are absolutely right in your observation.

    Vicki
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